Digital channels have exploded in importance over the past few years, becoming valuable tools for businesses to reach their current and potential customers. As such, businesses have begun to integrate digital marketing into their overall sales and marketing strategy.

One digital channel in particular is becoming an increasingly vital piece of the customer engagement puzzle: video. According to Nielsen's Australian Online Landscape Review the average adult spends over seven hours per month watching online video. And, what’s more, that number only continues to grow.

It’s clear that businesses have a real opportunity to leverage the power of video to meet their customers’ needs. Yet, because it’s “digital,” many businesses mistakenly think of that video as a separate component from their overall sales and marketing strategy.

Video shouldn’t be viewed as something separate, or even a simple add-on to customer engagement strategy. And businesses should absolutely avoid seeing it as a standalone offering in their omnichannel approach. Instead, video and digital marketing needs to be fully integrated into the sales and marketing machine for the greatest opportunity for success.

There are solutions to help incorporate digital marketing techniques into the traditional marketing tactics that businesses have been using for many years. Online personalised interactive video is one way companies across a variety of industries can improve customer experience, customer engagement and omnichannel opportunities, and boost their bottom line.

Here’s why digital needs to be integrated – not separated – from the traditional marketing machine.

Customer Experience

Recognising the growing need, and in an effort to quickly implement digital marketing into their business, many companies are largely separating the digital and traditional sides of marketing. The thought here is that it will be too cumbersome and time-consuming to weave the traditional and digital marketing techniques together. But, businesses are missing a huge opportunity to leverage the insights from digital and traditional marketing to create a more complete view of their customers.

By bringing digital and traditional together, businesses can move from many separate conversations into one dialogue. This helps create a unified and personalised conversation, bringing a customer through an incredibly individualised lifecycle.

Through personalised interactive videos in particular, customers form a more connected relationship with an organisation. Companies use customer data to allow the consumer to “self-serve” in a personalised and interactive way. That, in turn, helps businesses increase customer satisfaction and generate many other positive results.

Better Engagement

According to eMarketer, 77 percent of U.S. Internet users perceive companies that produce digital video marketing as being more engaged with their customers. What’s more, more than seven in 10 also said they had a generally positive impression of a brand, product or service after viewing digital video.

But it’s clear that it’s not just a perception of better engagement – digital and video marketing actually help improve engagement between companies and their customers. Why? Well, we know that customers are constantly being inundated by a variety of channels and communication, competing to win their attention. Personalised interactive video actually allows customers to customise their own experiences and therefore, stay more engaged.

Cross-Channel Opportunities

We all know the problems that siloed communications can bring to an organisation. They prevent information from flowing freely between departments, and also stop collaboration from happening naturally across different areas of an organisation. By breaking down these silos, and integrating their digital and traditional marketing approaches, companies can develop more effective strategies for unifying their customer communications and open up the doors to cross-channel opportunities.

Just think of all the valuable customer data that’s flowing in from marketing videos, as well as traditional marketing collateral. If a company isn’t sharing that data across all areas, they will miss seeing the big picture of their customers and potentially make mistakes in their individualised customer approach.

When individual departments share information on customer lifestyles, purchasing behaviours and more, businesses are able to fully optimize their marketing strategies and increase sales across the board.

Impact on the Bottom Line

Businesses might be concerned that integrating video and digital marketing into their overall marketing machine will take money and time that they just don’t have. But, what businesses might not recognise is that a personalised interactive video can be easily integrated into a multichannel communications strategy. Once that video approach is in place, personalised interactive videos can be used to help better streamline business processes, which has a positive impact on that bottom line.

They also can be used to help create easy-to-understand personalised video bill and statement explainers, which means customers can be more informed about what they’re paying for. Interactive video helps businesses proactively present information to customers in an understandable way, allowing them to receive information when they need it, dramatically reducing call centre inquiries. That, in turn, can help save on the bottom line as well.

Digital and Traditional Together

It may seem daunting at first, but businesses will reap the benefits of uniting their digital and traditional marketing tactics. Video and PIVs in particular, cannot be separated from a business’ overall communications strategy.

By integrating video – and particularly personalised interactive video – with traditional marketing, not only will companies see huge leaps in positive customer experience and customer engagement, they’ll also open up the doors for new cross-channel opportunities and savings on that bottom line.

For more information on the benefits to integrating video into your traditional marketing strategy, please click here.